Thursday, March 14, 2002 There is a potentially stormy meeting of the International Cricket Council at Cape Town over the next few days, but it should be used as an opportunity to bridge what is perceived as the great divide in world cricket.

India is aggrieved about what happened with Mike Denness in South Africa, but we're carrying it a bit too far. In my opinion, the whole issue should have been buried there and then. Denness's blunder should have been accepted as a bad decision - just like an umpiring mistake in a Test match. It was blown out of proportion then, and it will continue to get worse if some officials allow themselves to believe they are greater than the game.

What upset India more than anything else were the accusations of ball-tampering against Sachin Tendulkar, and Denness's mistake was to make the allegations, then withdraw the statement. However, Tendulkar was indeed fiddling, if not tampering, with the ball, and doing so without the umpires' permission. India should accept that he was, for the briefest moment, acting outside the law.

Appealing against the constitution of the panel set up by the ICC is bizarre. Where will it all end? On one hand, we're trying to reduce the appealing out in the middle, while off the field, we can't seem to get enough of it. For the sake of the game, let us bury the hatchet and get on with it. This is not a matter of prestige. Even if ICC were to backtrack and make the Centurion Test official, what difference would it make? Virender Sehwag has already served his sentence. It reminds me of the suggestion that the records of all people implicated in the match-fixing scandal should be erased. It's just not practical.

Jagmohan Dalmiya should remember that he has been the chief of the ICC and knows its functioning inside out. In any case, it is not as if ICC was known for straightforwardness during his tenure. There will be many people pointing fingers at him on various issues. This one-upmanship between administrators doesn't help. There was a time when people of the stature of Gubby Allen and Sir Donald Bradman were involved in the decision-making. Now you have a Malcolm Speed and a Malcolm Gray who are marketing or administrative people. They shouldn't consider ICC to be their personal fiefdom.

The match referee is at the crux of the whole problem. He is superfluous and his post needs to be abolished. If you don't have faith in the umpires, who are out on the field, how can you put faith in a man who has to rely purely on the TV camera for his actions? The more we legislate, the more we complicate a simple game. Maybe that's the decision ICC needs to take in the coming few days.

Bishan Bedi, who took 266 wickets for India in 67 Tests between 1966 and 1979, was talking to Rahul Bhattacharya.

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